The preliminary advice, as described by two people with knowledge of the matter and contained in documents seen by the Financial Times, comes from the WHO technical group.
While the WHO did not respond to questions, it said it was “aware” that a statement from the technical group was “forthcoming”, the report said.
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The real-world policy recommendation by the WHO will be made once safety and other data become available for variant-specific vaccines, the people with knowledge of the matter were quoted as saying.
Omicron-specific Booster Dose
While Moderna, Pfizer, and others have brought out Omicron-specific boosters, no variant-specific vaccine is yet on the market.
Moderna said its bivalent booster elicited increased antibodies last week and was safe and well-tolerated. And the European Medicines Agency began a rolling review of the BioNTech/Pfizer variant-specific vaccine this week.
The WHO advice “is a signal to the industry to develop vaccines that broaden the immune response in addition to maintaining protection against severe disease”, one of the people with knowledge of the matter said. “It’s only mRNA vaccines for now, so supplies will be limited,” the report said.
Based on the data available, the WHO estimates that an Omicron-specific booster would elicit “greater breadth” in the immune response.
However, the third dose of existing vaccines would still be used effectively.
“The relative benefit of these (variant) specific vaccines versus their cost is unknown,” the person was quoted as saying. “(We) need to be careful that people don’t think these are superior to existing vaccines.”
Source: IANS
